Goth's dark empire / Carol Siegel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Siegel, Carol, 1952-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Goth culture (Subculture).

Physical Description:

x, 211 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2005]

Summary:

In Goth's Dark Empire cultural historian Carol Siegel provides a fascinating look at Goth, a subculture among Western youth. It came to prominence with punk bands such as Marilyn Manson and was made infamous when it was linked erroneously to the Columbine High School murders. While the fortunes of Goth culture form a portion of this book's story, Carol Siegel is more interested in pursuing Goth-especially Goth's celebration of consensual sadomasochism (S/M)-as a means of resisting regimes of sexual normalcy upon which the maintenance of consumer capitalism depends. In the array of styles, practices, and aesthetics known as Goth, Siegel discovers avenues of escape from mainstream American values and ways of thinking as constructed by corporate advertising and the rhetoric of political conservatism.

The world of Goth can appear wide-ranging: in films such as Edward Scissorhands and The Crow, popular fiction such as Anne Rice's "vampire" novels, and rock bands such as Nine Inch Nails. And Goth was appealing as a mode of being sexually "undead"-and loving it. Goth culture accepted that people are imperfect and the world is dangerous; that sex involves desires the satisfaction of which can cause physical or emotional harm. First in an era of gender suspicion and then in the era of AIDS, such a notion could be very appealing. But in the early years of the twenty-first century, perhaps as part of the Columbine backlash, Goth virtually disappeared.

What was Goth and what happened to it? In this book, Siegel tracks Goth down, reveals the sources of its darkness, and shows that Goth as a defiant response to the modern world has not disappeared but only escaped underground.

Contents:

Perils for the pure

In memoriam darkwave hippies

That obscure object of desire revisited

Boys don't cry

Heterosexualizing the femme boy

Identity hunter A.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [195]-206) and index.

ISBN:

0253345936

0253217768

OCLC:

57349356